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Tokyo, Japan: 5/3

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cobiathan

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The day before, I and a couple of others decided we wanted to get up early to head to a flea market. It was an hour away, and started at 9AM – so we planned to leave by 8AM, and I woke up at 7AM (which in retrospect isn’t that early, but for my sleep schedule here, it was).

We managed to stick together on the train, but once we got to the flea market we mostly split up. Inspired by my Gameboy find the day before, a couple of guys went off to look for Gameboys. Micro (a German guy staying in the guest house) wanted to find a Gameboy Advance SP (the kind that looks like a little square and flips up) – and managed to find a Gameboy Advance (not SP) with Pokemon Ruby inside, all for 5000 yen (about $35 USD). After some fiddling with the power switch it worked! And now I want a Gameboy Advance . . . 😅

We spent about 5 hours at the flea market, and I got a few things:

  • A vintage mechanical watch with an auto-winding feature, which cost 5000 yen ($35 USD), but (as it ends up) runs about 2x faster than it should – something I think can be adjusted?
  • Four Gameboy games:
    • Super Mario Land, 900 yen (in English!)
    • Dr. Mario, 500 yen (Also in English!)
    • “Hamster Club” (translated from Japanese) – as best I can tell this is a game about taking care of hamsters? I got it because it looked cute and was only 500 yen.
    • Pokemon Green (Only available in Japanese, no English version was produced) for 1700 yen.
  • A US Eisenhower $1 coin (for $2.10, which I thought was funny)
  • A couple of old Japanese coins
  • One other item that is a gift for a friend who might read this blog 😛

After five hours of the flea market, I and another guest-house friend headed to an all-you-can-eat okonomiyaki place.

OLYMPUS C4100
On the way I finally stopped at a vending machine to try it out. I don’t know why I was expecting something more dramatic than what happened – I put two 100 yen coins in, pressed the button for the tea I wanted, and it clunked out of the machine into the tray with my change.
Japanese architecture is not made for people my height… I occasionally need to duck to get through doorways. I always need to duck on the metro exiting or entering the train, and a few days back, I was in a shop where I needed to hunch over most of the time!
Okonomiyaki is done a few different ways, but here it comes in a bowl, a mix of greens, meat (optionally), an egg and some other ingredients. Once mixed together, you pour it out onto a hot griddle and shape it into a pancake of sorts before letting it cook for about 10 minutes on each side.
Once finished, you drizzle them with okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise, then cut them up and eat them in little bites.

I first had okonomiyaki with the Petersons, since they loved it when they went to Japan. I’ve never had it otherwise, so I was glad for the chance to try it in Japan!

After this, I was very sleepy – so I went back to the guesthouse (arrived around 7:30) and slept for two hours (till around 9:30) before getting up, grabbing a few snacks at the closest convenience store (convenience stores here are actually quite convenient! They have the normal junk food seen in the US, but also a number of decently inexpensive premade food that’s pretty similar to what you’d find in a grocery store deli in the US). After spending a little time downstairs socializing, I headed to bed.

All for today! More to come, of course. My time in Japan (and thus my time abroad) is coming to an end.

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